The City (19 page)

Indaro saw two comrades backed against a rock, one of them badly wounded, clutching his side. They were under attack by three enemy footsoldiers. She charged her horse towards them just as the injured man slumped to the ground, a knife in his neck. The other Wildcat killed an enemy soldier with a sword thrust to the groin. Then his eyes flickered to Indaro as she rode up. The moment cost him his life as he was cut down. Indaro screamed and sliced her sword across one head, then impaled the last Blue, thrusting deeply down through neck and chest. She dragged the blade out.

‘Indaro!’ She turned the horse and saw Doon calling to her from the boulder. She rode over. ‘We’re retreating!’ her friend cried, pointing towards the west. She was standing awkwardly, a bloody knife in her hand and an enemy dying at her feet.

Indaro gazed around and nodded. There were too many of them, and most of the City’s wounded soldiers were dead. The torches had been lost in the fighting, and darkness was now their only defence.

‘Where’s Fell?’

Doon shrugged. ‘I don’t know where anyone is, but I saw some of ours going that way.’ She pointed again to the west.

‘Get on,’ Indaro ordered her, turning the horse so its rump bumped against the rock. Doon got on awkwardly, her breathing sharp and agonized in Indaro’s ear.

‘Your right!’ she cried, and Indaro twisted to see two horsemen bearing down on them, spears lowered.

One of them aimed at her body, the other for the horse. Indaro deflected the first spear with her sword, but the blade broke, and the second spear struck their mount in the belly. It screamed and its back legs collapsed, throwing the two women to the ground. Indaro hit her head on a rock as she fell and, dazed, struggled to get up. The two horsemen dismounted and came at them and Doon, limping heavily, stepped in front of her, her sword raised. The two riders looked at each other, grinning. Easy meat, the look said.

They attacked Doon together, as Indaro rose shakily to her feet. She shook her head, trying to clear it, but the world was blurred and her eyes could not focus. Nevertheless she ran at the two soldiers, waving her blade like a child, and one turned to counter her. Taking a breath she dived and rolled clumsily at the first man’s legs, slashing wildly at his inner thigh. The second man, wrong-footed, turned and Doon flung her sword at him. The throw was poor and he was hit on the shoulder by the pommel. But he staggered, then Indaro was up and sprang at him and buried the broken blade in his side.

She grabbed his sword and, her head clearing, looked around. There was darkness everywhere, except in the east, where they could hear shouts of triumph from the enemy troops. The injured horse was writhing and screaming, blood pouring from its belly. She knelt and cut its throat and its blood poured over her.

She looked at Doon, who was sitting in the dust, her face white in the dim moonlight.

‘Which way?’ she asked. Which way do we run, she was asking. Now we have lost.

Doon shrugged. ‘I saw some of ours going west. But they’ll chase us that way, back towards the City. We could go north or south. It might be safer.’

Indaro shook her head. ‘If there are other Reds out there, we’ll join them.’ She helped Doon to stand and, her shoulder under her friend’s arm, they struggled off into the night.

The sea was jewel-dark green and blue. It felt warm against his naked body like a bed of soft velvet under moonlight. The man lay resting deep in its depths, cocooned by thick, viscous water stroking his naked skin. Bubbles slid past his body, rising upwards towards watery sunlight which shone down hazily as if through glass. Big bubbles rose slowly, lingering against his chest and flanks, while small bubbles fizzed between his toes and fingers. He was lying on his stomach and the weight of water felt heavy on him.

He suddenly remembered he could not breathe, and struggled to lift his head. The smell in his nostrils was of earth and blood …

Fell tried to open his eyes but they were glued shut. He could barely move. His chest felt crushed and he could not breathe properly. It was so hot. His right hand was stretched out ahead of him and, with an effort, he pulled it in under his shoulder and tried to lift himself.
His head was pounding in time with his heartbeat and the sudden movement made it spin. The entire earth and his body lying upon it lurched hideously and he clung on and rode it out. Then he sucked in another muddy breath and tried again. There was something lying on his back, on his legs. With an effort that made him groan he pulled his head and right shoulder free of the weight upon him. When the world stopped lurching again, he prised his eyes open and looked around.

It was bright daylight, and he was lying by a pile of corpses, carelessly thrown in a heap. Face to face with him was Malachi, the northlander who had served in his company for a few doomed days. Half his head had been hacked away. Fell looked around sadly, seeing faces he had known for months, for years, eyes dusty in death.

He remembered the alert in the night, the galloping riders, a rearing horse, a kick in the head. The Wildcats hadn’t stood a chance. Where were the guards? Was he the only survivor? Fell groaned and sank back down in pain.

But after a moment he thought, they have piled the corpses.
To burn them?
Energized by fear, he lifted himself up again and dragged his battered body from under the dead soldiers. He lay for a while, exhausted, then stirred himself and got to his feet. He found it hard to stand upright, for the pain in his head made him dizzy and weak. He looked around, squinting against the sunlight which pierced his head like blades.

He could see no movement, no survivors. Most of the dead had already been injured when the night attack came. They had no defence against the cavalry. Raising his sights he could see no sign of the enemy. But that did not mean they were not coming back. They hadn’t gone to the trouble of piling the corpses for nothing. They were probably chasing survivors. Fell would, if the positions were reversed. He had to be well away from this place when they returned.

He searched for a water skin but they had all been taken or used up. Finally he found one with a little water in the bottom, and he sucked it down, feeling the pain in his head recede slightly. He found a sword which was blunted but not broken, and a dagger with the point missing. He sat down and eased off his right boot and took out the slender knife he kept there as a spare. He stuck both knives in his belt, and the sword in the scabbard. He checked the pouch at his side. Luckily the enemy had been in too much of a hurry to loot the
corpses and it was still intact. There was some dried beef wrapped in paper and he munched it down stolidly. It was hard to swallow, the dry tasteless meat clinging to his tongue and teeth. He wished there were more water.

Only then did he consider which way to go. The enemy were between him and the City, but safety lay that way. Yet any horses that had run from the battle would have gone north, towards the river, for horses could always smell water. He decided to head north in the hope of finding a stray mount.

The sun was at its height as he set off, a piece of crimson cloth wrapped around his head to shield his eyes. He walked in the heat of the afternoon without seeing any enemy soldiers, or surviving Wildcats, or horses. To the west and north he could see nothing but flat plain disappearing into the dusty distance. He walked through low scrub and the going was easy, but the pain in his head grew more violent. He stopped once to vomit up the beef, then set out again. His steps became shorter and more uncertain as his head spun and his vision blurred. The headache was becoming unbearable and he moaned as he walked and the movement jolted his head. Finally his legs gave way and he collapsed on the ground, knocking himself out for a moment.

He came to and retched again, although there was nothing left in his belly. He looked around him, the brown landscape jumping and swooping sickeningly in his vision. Weak as a lamb, he crawled over to a small depression in the land guarded by a low rock. There were dry twigs and grass within his grasp and he quickly built a small fire, his hand shaking as he struck the flint. Then, on the verge of unconsciousness, he took out the small packet of herbs he always kept with him and threw them on the fire. There was little left, and he prayed to the healing gods of Ascelus that there would be enough. His head in his hands, he breathed in the acrid fumes, holding down the nausea, concentrating on staying awake. He took another deep breath and felt the opiates reaching into his system. The pain racked up a notch and he moaned. Then he carefully laid his head on the earth and fell into blackness.

When he came to again the pain had gone and he lay there for a while luxuriating in its absence. Since a spear had pierced the bone of his head in a battle ten years before he had been victim to ferocious headaches. The herbs had been given him, not by a healer
but by a maidservant at an inn in Otaro two years before. The girl had found him helpless on the floor of his room, deep in the throes of disabling pain. She had offered him the herbs but he had refused them, suspecting witchcraft, and she had nursed him for the four days it took for the headache to pass. When he left she pressed the packet of herbs upon him and he had taken them, grateful for her kindness but intending to throw them away. Forced by desperation to use them a few weeks later, he had discovered their power. He took the first opportunity to return to the inn to reward her, but she was long gone, pressed into the army, the landlord said, her small child left in the care of the blacksmith’s old mother. Fell, another fatherless child, had left a year’s wages with the crone, who had first been delighted and grateful, then had tried to prise more from him, thinking him the child’s sire.

Now the last of the healing herbs was gone, and he feared future attacks.

Dismissing the problem from his mind, he stood up and looked around him. It was getting towards dusk and he was standing at the edge of a sea of long grass. The breeze from the north ruffled it like waves on water. Above him a white hawk circled effortlessly, seeking prey on the ground. He sniffed the cool evening air. The smell of the grass was exhilarating, but it was the smell of water that lifted his spirits. The river was nearby. There he could drink his fill and find new strength. He might find a horse to ride and, even better, he might find an enemy corpse.

SIMIOS HIGHNORTH WAS
a young garian warrior. The thin fuzz on his cheek could not yet be called a beard, yet he was already a two-year veteran.

He had been born to an unwed shepherd girl who left the care of her flocks one night to deliver the child in fear and pain as the world slept. When her small village awoke the next morning the squalling dark-haired babe proved her shame for all to see. The villagers stoned her, of course, and she fled, the babe still bloody in her arms. Her elderly parents, dazed and bewildered by this sudden and hideous turn of events, had no choice but to follow her, and the four refugees found sanctuary in a village twenty leagues on, where the child became the son of a hero, a brave cavalryman lost in the endless war.

Simios grew to be tall and strong, red-cheeked and curly-headed, but he was a quiet young man who sat at the edges of conversations and never joined in the heated barroom debates of the loud, opinionated soldiers who were his comrades. He was the one who was always content to steer his drunken friends home after a night of excess, and if he slept badly it was because he worried about his mother, not about the next day’s battle.

In his last visit home the previous autumn he had become joyfully engaged to the daughter of the village dyer, but he had not yet told his friends for he feared the coarse raillery he would endure, and he
hid her keepsake, a piece of fine cotton embroidered with the lovers’ names, away from sneering eyes.

Fell Aron Lee found the young man’s body, his throat hacked out, his brown eyes filled with sand, and felt like celebrating. The Blues were usually scrupulous about clearing away their dead, but this soldier must have been killed before the flood and his body washed down the river. Now it lay in unwilling companionship with scores of City soldiers, their corpses already bloating in the fierce heat.

Fell stripped off his battered red uniform and packed it away in an abandoned knapsack, knowing he would need it again if he escaped enemy territory. He was reluctant to leave his breastplate, which had served him well, saving his life again and again throughout the last five years. But he could hardly wear it, and he could not cram it into the bag. Regretfully, he threw it aside. The dead man’s clothes were well looked after, cuts and tears finely stitched, he noticed as he pulled them on.

He was debating whether to take the boots or not, trying to judge their size, it being difficult to prise the boots off a dead man, when he heard the sound of distant voices, and lay flat on the sandy bank. It was a platoon of enemy soldiers, with a cart, collecting bodies from all along the river. It took them some time to load the wooden cart, but at last they were off towards the east. They never came near Fell, and once they had disappeared he stood and set off in the opposite direction. He decided against changing his boots. It was hardly uncommon, after all, for a City soldier to be wearing Blue boots or vice versa.

As he walked he tried to visualize where he was on his drowned campaign maps. He was now well north-east of the battlefield of Salaba, and if he travelled directly west he would, he thought, see the City walls by midday tomorrow. He had plenty of water and was uninjured, and he felt remarkably cheerful as he strode across the barren land. He wondered, as he had done before, if the healing herbs had a secondary effect of buoying his spirits. Deep in his mind he knew he should be feeling remorseful at the loss of so many troops, guilty that he chose to defend an indefensible position rather than make a night run for the City.

He had heard the soldiers’ whispers that he was invulnerable, that he suffered scarcely a scratch while those who had marched beside him down the years were gutted, poisoned, beheaded, drowned and,
in one hideous case, burned to death. It hadn’t stopped his warriors, men and women, from being drawn to him, hoping perhaps that some of his fortune would spill on to them. He could hardly complain about his good luck. But gliding through the war as a survivor while his friends and comrades died one by one had provoked in him an overpowering sense of guilt.